ABSTRACT
In ‘Public Dancers’, a widely cited chapter in his Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836), Edward Lane records his observations of male and female public performers of Ottoman Egypt during the first half of the nineteenth century:
Egypt has long been celebrated for its public dancing-girls; the most famous of whom are of a distinct tribe, called ‘Ghawázee’. A female of this tribe is called ‘Gházeeyeh’; and a man, ‘Gházee’; but the plural Ghawázee is generally understood as applying to the females. The misapplication of the appellation ‘´Al’mes’ to the common dancing girls of this country has already been noticed.
(Lane 1966 [1836]: 384)